Hi everybody, I’m Edie Berg, thank you so much for joining me today! Today’s episode is #84 of the longer version podcast, and next week’s episode is #85 -- amazing how it works that way, hey? So for these two episodes, I’ll be doing solo episodes, and let’s see how we go. A few reasons for this: 1. I like doing them! It’s fun just to talk into the mic: it’s kind of freeing for me! 2. I don’t have to worry about having a guest. So this is also true for the quickie history podcasts, the #SWC’s, that I don’t have a live guest whom I ask questions. In the quickie podcast I talk about a strong Jewish woman in history, and it’s only about 5 minutes long. So even if you hate history, you can probably swallow these podcasts, plus I try to make them interesting with sound bites from the past, which are really fun to hear. 3. I feel the need to start talking about issues that I’m thinking about, and start teaching! So you probably know that I’m working on a big leadership conference that I’m producing, coming up at the end of March. It’s a ton of work. In that conference we’ll concentrate on leadership, gender equality, entrepreneurial skills, and Jewish daily life. So I figure it’s a good idea to start teaching some of those, or all of those, topics here too. So today, I’m taking kind of a cool short cut. Cool for me, that is. Last summer, or rather, for the whole second half of last year, I decided it was important to write for large online publications. I still think that’s true, and I’ll be going back to that more once the summit is over for this time. One of the article I wrote was for Success.com, and it has been shared on Facebook over 49,000 times which really is a lot of times!! So although I find that rather surprising, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share the article here. Now the article is a listicle, which is an article based around a list, duh. I used that format, not because I particularly love it, but because Success.com particularly loves it! The title of the article is “15 Traits of Unabashedly Successful Women.” I’m going to talk about all 15 traits that I wrote, but not all today. I’ll do half today, and half next week, so it won’t be too much for you, or for me, all in one episode! So let’s get going!! I learned from interviewing super-successful women each week for well over a year, and that’s where I gathered this info from. It isn’t a scientific research article. More things that I’ve learned, and now I’m passing them on to you, my lovely listeners, whom I appreciate so much!! Number one: Unabashedly successful women play to their strengths! So before you can play to your strengths, you have to know yourself pretty well, or really well, know and accept that you aren’t good at everything, but you are really great at some things. Do those, and delegate the rest! For example: you love to talk on podcasts, but you don’t love the social media aspect of running an online business? Get somebody else to do it! They’ll thank you for it, they’ll do it a lot faster than you, and certainly better than you. Plus, you’ll have more time freed up from not doing what you don’t love to dedicate to other tasks that need to be addressed. So that was successful women play to their strengths. Number two: They have ambition. These women do not dream about being the best in their section or in their department. Their eyes are set on being the best in the state or country, at least. Most want to change the world! So think big, then think bigger! Am I teaching leadership? NO! I’m building a movement of career-minded women who want to change the world for themselves and for the following generations! Number three: They stay positive. Successful women, actually, successful people, which will include men, even though I tend to talk about the standpoint of the woman, because that’s what I understand best; successful women know how to deal with disappointment in a way that keeps them from getting down and staying down. They know the future will be bright for them. And they know it from inside themselves, not needing constant encouragement from outside sources. So get it into your head, and believe it, keep it there, that you will be a success! You already are a success! And tomorrow will be even greater, even brighter! Number four: They’re organized. Ok, so not every person is born organized. But the successful ones behave this way: when I approach them to do the podcast, they say yes or no, but they answer quickly. If it’s a yes, then they check their calendars, book a date, then do the interview. Not a lot of reschedules, no extra emails. They decide what they want to do, when they want to do it, and then they just do it. Simple and organized. No big deal. Number five trait of unabashedly successful women: They’re constantly learning. These women do not stay static. They are continuously improving themselves, use mentors and coaches to accelerate their improvement. This is important, as are all the other traits on this list. But you not only need to keep up with the game, you need to get ahead of it, and you need to even invent it. But if you stay on the same level, then you really aren’t. You really are going backwards. And backwards is not a good thing. At every stage of your career, every stage of your life, be sure to be a constant learner. Otherwise, life is just too damn boring. That’s a known fact :) Number six! (I kind of feel like I’m emceeing the Price is Right, or Let’s make a Deal, which would be kind of cool….) So number six is that they have a strong support system. Most of the women who are really successful have a very supportive partner or family member. They know that they have somebody to lean on when they need it. Warren Buffet has said that this was his most important business decision of his whole life - choosing who to marry. So, this is not to say, and please don’t get angry with me, and tell me that there are a lot of fabulously successful single people. I know. I do. But that doesn’t mean that who you choose to spend most of your life with isn’t a very important decision, that if you get right, that helps!! It just does! You have to admit that’s true. Number seven (and the last for today just because that’s how I’ve chosen to split 15 into two): They know that failure and success go together. You know that. What’s clever is if you expect it, and aren’t afraid of the failure. That takes all of the sting out and that will enable you to readjust, regather quickly, get your ducks in a row, as the girls in my Mastermind like to say, and go for whatever it is again! Stronger now and better now!! So don’t be surprised by failure: Be prepared, think out possible scenarios, worst-case events, be ready! Be bummed when it happens, then move on! Ok, So those were the first 7 of the 15 traits of unabashedly successful women. If you want, you can jump ahead to next week, go to Success.com where you can read the whole article. You won’t find it on my site, the stuff you write for large publications like that is all original content, so it’s not something I republished or anything like that. Or you can just wait for next week’s Strong Women’s Club podcast episode, which I hope you do! Now I have a request for you- actually, it’s a couple of requests: One, please go to iTunes now, yes right now. Even if you’re on the treadmill, then stop for just a second, turn your run into intervals, and jump on over to iTunes and leave a nice rating and review. Then, while you’re there, please share this episode with three of your friends, who you think might enjoy it! Only three, not the whole PTA, or whatever. Just copy the link right off of the iTunes page there, and paste it onto a WhatsApp group of friends, or onto your FB page, or LinkedIn, or wherever, and share it! That would be really helpful. This podcast has to grow faster. So I truly appreciate it. Truly. Tag me, if you want, and I’d love to thank you. That’s thanking you for your thank you, but that’s ok. It’s nice to be nice to each other. Have a great week everybody, keep working, keep being strong and getting stronger. Ciao for now! L’Hitraot!